


Play Into the Night

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, John's Memory Bungalow, M/M, Mind Palace, Sherlock Plays the Violin, Sherlock's Mind Palace, Sherlock's Violin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 06:33:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7423795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock loses his violin and John uses his own version of a mind palace to find it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Play Into the Night

**Author's Note:**

> Submission for the July 2016 Sherlock Challenge to Tumblr. The theme was "Domestic Crimes".

“Where is it?” 

A large book flew just short of where John lay reclined in his seat, eyes closed, and he tried his hardest not to automatically flinch. Sherlock charged in and out of the sitting room, upturning pieces of furniture by the sound of it. 

_ Just stay still, he may think I’m still asleep. _ John tried to keep his breathing long and deep. When he heard the sound of Sherlock lifting up the couch he gave up and sat forward in his chair, the newspapers from his lap slipping to the floor. The rug was littered with all sorts of odds and ends, mostly cast to the side as Sherlock carried on with his search.

“Keep this up and a trip to the kitchen will require boots and a safari hat, Sherlock! What’s all this about?” 

Sherlock sniffed, “My violin. Lost itself somewhere.” He opened a drawer that could not in any way house the missing violin, far too small and already crammed with old clippings that Sherlock must have surely knew were already there.

John sighed and pulled himself up, resigned to the fact that nothing less than a full-flat investigation would be needed before Sherlock was convinced the violin was elsewhere. He half-heartedly picked up the newspapers, stacking them where he had been sitting, before turning to go towards their bedroom.

“Already looked in there!” Sherlock called, angrily slamming a drawer shut. That was the drawer neither of them talked about, one where the empty shell of Irene Adler’s phone was lying to collect dust. Sherlock kept it there as a reminder, possibly a physical representation of his failure to his older brother and his now-boyfriend. He liked to think he still somehow kept it secret from John, and John indulged him, as The Woman was not usually a topic he ever liked to recall.

Another drawer was shut, this time gently. John turned and walked back to the sitting room, where Sherlock sat cross legged on the floor with his back against the sofa, staring straight ahead into what must have been his mind palace.

Carefully, John sat down next to Sherlock and wrapped a hand in one of his, knees bumping together, their only points of contact. When Sherlock got like this, almost meditative in a search through his mind, John would sit next to him and use that time to work on his own version of a mind palace. 

He closed his eyes tight and tried to match his breathing with Sherlock’s. In his head, what he termed his Memory Bungalow, was a patchy version of 221B (the websites suggested using a place he visited often in real life). If Sherlock’s mind palace was a beautifully rendered work of lifelong dedication, John’s bungalow was more of an 8-bit creation, the floor flattened to wood as he could never remember the rug patterns, and only the biggest pieces of furniture were in their correct place. 

He quietly walked along his normal route, recalling what the gigantic strawberry and the skull and crossbone flag stretched across the wall meant. He cycled through what he could remember of Sherlock’s last case, then eventually looked around for where he usually stored any information about music (admittedly a small pile).

Aside from tiny snatches of James Bond soundtracks and classical pieces he could not remember the names of (‘ _ In the Halls of the Troll King’? No, that can’t be right! _ ), he saw nothing that related to the violin. Except… ah hah!

The scene changed abruptly, a bit to John’s surprise. He looked around, and 221B was much more filled out now, more details placed in their proper order, and it was darker, calmer, and across from him, standing at the window, he saw Sherlock.

“I played something for you, do you remember? It was… Pablo de Sarasate I think…” Sherlock frowned, his fingers pressed to the sides of his temple.

John shrugged, “I suppose.” He leaned back in what must be his chair, although admittedly it looked somehow… older? Yes, the whole place felt older, almost Victorian in appearance. 

“John, try to remember, please, my violin is missing!”

“I know that, Sherlock.”

Sherlock surged towards him, grasping his hands, “Please, it’s important to me, I was going to play him something special tonight, it’s… what did you say?”

John grinned fondly, “Of course I know your violin is missing, that’s why I’m here. Can’t say I know why my mind imagined you up if all you’re going to do is shout at me while I try and figure out where that blasted thing went to. But I know it’s important to you.”

Sherlock still looked very confused, “How… but you don’t have a mind palace?”

John squirmed under his scrutinizing gaze, “Well, this has to be the most detailed version I’ve worked up, mostly it’s just whatever bits and pieces I can remember. I don’t know why everything’s Victorian all of a sudden, though. I’ve only bothered with our modern home.”

Sherlock’s expression softened, and he gently kissed John, “I suppose stranger things could happen. Do you know where my violin is?”

“No, I’m afraid not,” John straightened up, “But I was just thinking about how you were playing that… whoever’s work it was… and then I mentioned I was tired and you told me you’d just stay up and sleep on the couch later.”

“But I didn’t sleep on the couch. And besides it’s not there.” Sherlock grumbled, until he realised where John was leading, “Oh…”

“The upstairs room.” John pointed up at where the stairs would be, “Cleaners, remember? They’d finished, and since the only thing left in there now is some of your experiments and the bed you must have gone up there.”

Sherlock nodded, crawling up onto John’s lap and burying his head into the crook of John’s neck, mumbling.

“I can’t hear you, dear.”

“-- said I was tired, don’t remember going up there.” his mouth popped open, “Oh. The wine! No wonder I didn’t remember.”

John nuzzled against Sherlock’s cheek, “Try there then, love.”

“John?”

“Hmm?”

Sherlock looked up with big eyes, “Are you in your mind palace right now?”

“Yeah.” John shuffled, “What is it?”

Sherlock gulped, “I am too.”

Just at that moment, John startled awake, jerking up from where he had been laying his head on Sherlock’s shoulder. Sherlock too looked as if he had drifted off and just woken up. They looked at each other, both mouthing the word “upstairs”, and then rushed up to find the violin without further comment. Sure enough, the violin was lying beneath the bed, dumped there carelessly by a drunk and very tired Sherlock.

“It’s just like you said, John!” Sherlock smiled warmly, locking up the violin case and then hugged John tightly.

John squinted, “Sherlock… did we have the same dream?”

Sherlock grinned and whispered, “Stranger things have happened.” 

He then sauntered off down to the sitting room, where it was just beginning to get darker. John flipped through some take out menus out of habit, asking what Sherlock was in the mood for, but when he got no response he looked over and found Sherlock curled up in his chair with his violin nestled safely on his lap.

“You know,” John walked up to him and cupped Sherlock’s jaw in his hands, “the other you, in the other world, told me you were going to play something special for me tonight. Is that true?”

Sherlock frowned, “Oh rot, that’s what I get for telling my mind palace John all of my secrets.”

“I doubt something like that is going to happen more than once in a lifetime, love.”

“Hmm, perhaps.” Sherlock glanced down at his violin, “But I do want to play you something. I’ve been working on it for awhile now.”

John smiled and nodded, sitting back down in his chair, as Sherlock got up and quickly gathered some music sheets he had stashed in a drawer of the desk. 

John closed his eyes, and to his surprise when the music began he heard the first few notes of a very familiar song. It was that one Sherlock had played after Irene Adler’s apparent death, one John believed to be for The Woman. Sherlock had sent hours of testing that one string of notes, growing longer and longer until it slowly began to form a sad, lonely song. 

But this time… it sounded a bit different. It was lighter somehow, gentler, touched with hope. It no longer sounded lonely. It was like all the times John came home from a long day at work, or when Sherlock solved an exhilarating case, rushing through the streets and back to Baker Street with John in hand. It was their slow and wandering talks during the early hours of the morning, half buried in their pillows and covered in warm sheets. 

It was them. It was their love song.

The song finally drew to an end, and John opened his eyes, looking up at Sherlock with tears slipping down his cheeks. He watched Sherlock set down the violin, safely where he would remember it the next time, and then walked over to sit in John’s lap.

“And you call me the romantic one?” John asked.

Sherlock rolled his eyes but moved closer, burying himself in the warmth of their shared body heat, “Of course, John. After all, you were the one who combined our mind palaces together to solve the crime.”

“I’d hardly call a missing violin a crime, Sherlock. And anyway, I don’t have a mind palace, it’s a Memory Bungalow.”

Sherlock gasped mockingly, “Oh my god, John, really now!”

The two laughed at that, cuddling up together. And slowly, their eyes began to flutter and shut, until they both lay fast asleep in the chair. In their dreams, they both sat in a mesh of their mind palace and bungalow, quietly and contently listening as Sherlock’s violin played by itself well into the night.


End file.
